Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter
I hear frequently from readers who fear they are the narcissist and the one with the personality disorder.
My answer?
“Absolutely not!”
This distorted thinking is a consequence of prolonged abuse that started in childhood and its traumatic impacts on your beliefs, self-worth, self-assurance, gauges of reasoning, and your abilities to trust and regulate your emotions. It also is a consequence of not clearly understanding the differences between being narcissistic which is a normal and adaptive characteristic and being pathologically narcissistic that is personality disorder that has no cure.
The fact that you would even be concerned about this, demonstrates that your emotional capabilities although skewed, are intact.
Prolonged narcissistic abuse is slick invalidation from emotional vampires – carefully planned and premeditated efforts to stealthily through covert aggressive combat maneuvers, take everything valuable that you have to offer (your love, trust, compassion, beauty, generosity, child-bearing abilities, finances, or whatever) that they can manipulate from you to provide an illusion of grandeur and greatness to the world without any of the work.
When we do, we give up our power and energy that per our divine design at conception, were intended to be used by and for us to nurture our souls and become the best versions of ourselves as we search for internal truth – truth that we choose to share with others in relationships of mutual respect.
So, “no” you are not a narcissist. You, however, are a wounded victim of one or more who steal energy from you they cannot generate on their own. And perhaps you picked up some of their bad behaviors that will pass once you are away from them.
The good news is that you can fix your skewed thinking and heal and as you do, so will your children and you will thrive. You will make memories and people will love you just for being you. You will release the pain that made you vulnerable to them in the first place and become a stronger more self-assured version of yourself.
You will take your power back and thrive. I explore these topics in much more depth in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors.
Narcissists will be forever evil and when they are done and gone, the only person anyone will miss is the one they will never be.
Read more below on the topic from one of my favorite Facebook Pages of “Truth,” “Sanctuary for Awareness and Recovery:”
Sanctuary For Awareness And Recovery
Paradox with several Personality Disorders and mental illnesses: since the ego and perception are both affected, it is common for those with some personality disorders and mental illnesses with narcissistic traits to actually perceive those they are treating poorly as the ones who are narcissistic, because of their reactions to their behavior, or because they have healthy confidence and boundaries. The root cause is usually a lack of boundaries, and a lack of respect or awareness for other people’s boundaries.
So the person who insults your teeth might call you “narcissistic” if you don’t just let them insult your teeth. Apparently you were supposed to agree with them or hang your head in shame, not stand up for yourself against a blatant insult. So therefore in their mind the insult was perfectly fine, it was your reaction to the insult that was “narcissistic.”
Another example of this may be when someone enters your home or room without knocking or without waiting for an answer when this has not been established as the “norm” for them in your home or room, in other words you have not told them to “don’t knock, just come in.” They’re already showing a lack of boundaries with this behavior, so one shouldn’t be surprised that they react very defensively and emotionally when asked not to do that.
Saying and doing things that display hostility, arrogance, coldness, aggression, superiority or hatred are blatant displays of poor or absent boundaries, so when such a person’s behavior is confronted, disagreed with, or disapproved of, (speaking in a respectful manner that is), they are most likely going to react defensively and perceive it as arrogance, control, or an attack, and if they have some level of narcissism they may rage.
The Roman Catholic Church recognized the Seven Capital Virtues as opposites to the Seven Deadly Sins. According to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the sins have an order of greatness, and the virtues a respective order of greatness as well.
This is what I profess, that in all religions, at a point in history when the level of man’s thinking was less mature, when psychology did not exist and we relied on the heavens for answers, folks were describing narcissists and psychopaths. Compassionate loving empathic virtuous people from every corner of the world who were being targeted and scapegoated by narcissists and psychopaths (Jesus being the most famous of scapegoats) were desperate for answers in their common searches for truth. And they wrote their answers in their scriptures and described them in anecdotes to educate and warn us of the evil among us and the impending doom. This is what preempted “psychology” before its birth and we could put a name to these disordered humans. And they were pretty much spot on.
And those evil ones, the narcissists and psychopaths, when they pass, people will rejoice and forget them and no one will share memories of them or miss them. They cannot be cured. They are evil unrepentant sinners who cannot create their own energy and leave no memories to sustain those who remain. Their spirits and insatiable souls are gone forever. This, I profess is eternal damnation commonly known as “hell.”
with a narcissist or were raised by or among one or more, you have been traumatized by and suffered what I believe is the worst psychological and emotional abuse imaginable. The harm is immeasurable and can go on for years.
Oh, the narcissist will make all attempts to take something from you, no doubt. They need to in order to survive. It is their given purpose like it is a mosquito’s purpose to buzz around and annoy you. So the goal here is to minimize the harm to you and your children using psychological narc repellant.
Narcissists are aggressive but very predictable and you can use this to develop offensive strategies to achieve your goals and minimize harm from them. Your choice of divorce or to stop providing narcissistic supply will instill his or her wrath and they will fight to the death to win and defend their fear of shame from you exposing the truth about who they really are to those who know them and even those who do not in the courtroom. So he or she will not hesitate to destroy you and your reputation and lie about you and recruit his flying monkeys to lie about you in court. Expect this and be prepared. Stay calm and focused on long-term emotional freedom and your children’s well-being, not short term self-satisfaction and retaliation.
Give something up periodically to provide an illusion that the narcissist won rather
Truth is again on my mind like usual or more accurately “the search for truth” and its role in nurturing our souls. Here are my thoughts:
Once our souls are nourished, we feel complete – happy – content – valued. We know how 
We, folks, are NOT the source of our pain. We are the source of our joy. And we own and are responsible for regulating our emotions including our pain. Other things or people can only trigger them. However, our emotions become overly taxed and go haywire after extreme emotional neglect and pain that can make us feel unsafe in our own bodies. Our lives becomes a cycle of creating pain and
This is no secret as what some want us to believe. As a matter of fact, this cognitive based school of thought was founded by Christian Larsen in the very early 1900’s over 100 years ago and now most of his books are free to the public!!
We can also mistake 
Healing provides us a divine opportunity to become the authentic persons we were put on this earth to be and thrive. It is at this point that our painful pasts will no longer matter because we have broken our pain addictions and learned to provide our own selves the love and self-respect and self-assurance and self-care that we need to sustain us and thrive and the new found belief that we are worth the effort. We have learned to use our compassion responsibly and we can reliably decide what serves our hearts and souls even in our choices of paying respects when our attackers who we love or once loved have are dying or have died. Even if they are dying, their toxicity is not diminished, just their capacity to act on it. So their “death” or pending death sadly or fortunately (depends on how you choose to view it) essentially forces us into “No Contact” that supports our emotional healing and removes us from the harm from their toxicity.
“Forgiveness is part of healing. It is not a prerequisite to healing. It is a point we reach when we understand and accept the truth about what happened to us from a position of emotional neutrality without the pain, blame and shame that our abusers shadowed on us.” 
One attack, you may think, takes place in the conscious physical world – the other, in the metaphysical, the metacognitive world where we feel and think. However, the pain and shame and anger and fear and trauma we experience from a brutal physical or emotional brutal attack are the same. They inflict the same wounds and frequently open old ones. In addition, there are major differences to how we heal from the wounds. This is why.
beliefs and convictions. I agree with renowned author and therapist Dr. Alice Miller and others that we do not have to forgive and that forgiving our abusers is a personal choice. We can add a huge amount of emotional burden to an already painful situation by being told if we do not forgive, we punish ourselves twice..blah blah blah. This can leave us conflicted and feeling added guilt and even shame when we really do not want to forgive.
Healing, folks, has nothing to do with our abusers. Healing is, however, all about the victims. We are left to heal invisible wounds that were caused by our active but unaware participation in a very harming situation. Abuse survivors must work to turn their compassion and care inward and release the pain, trauma, shame, anger and fear that were projected onto them and inflicted on them by the emotional and conscienceless criminals, vampires, and thieves who also stole their identities. We, to heal, must not only release the pain and anger from the attack but also the shame from betrayal and of our unconscious complicity in the crime and our perceived foolery. This is why self-forgiveness and self-compassion are so important in healing. As Emily R., a community member at Yourlifelifter so eloquently stated, “forgiving a conscienceless person has absolutely zero meaning, thus, the real issue is learning to forgive oneself for not trusting oneself over their manipulative ploys of false promises and fake emoting.”
It is a point we reach when we understand and accept the truth about what happened
Healing is a process of self-discovery, self-analysis into the root causes of why we were victimized, addressing how our beliefs contributed to that, correcting our skewed beliefs, mourning our losses, building our self-worth as well as healing our trauma wounds. I personally believe, it is close to impossible to fully accept what happened to us and forgive ourselves for the part we played unless we first heal and recover from the trauma and then stop our faulty victim thinking. This requires fully understanding why we love people who inflict pain on us and why we are attracted to power imbalanced relationships.
We cannot expect things from people who are not capable of giving them. I accept that life is not fair and I was born into a herd of narcissists that I had no choice over. But I do have choices now based on my new found personal truth and not others’ lies. I choose a life I know I deserve, a life of peace, harmony, happiness, emotionally healthy love and mutual respect! I also accept that they cannot. I also accept that truly evil people do exist and that I do not possess the divine power, right, and authority to absolve them of their depravity.
There are not many left now back in the “village” and the herd is thin so the narcissists who are left are starving and now make some of the ones they scapegoated their golden children and feed off of each other and lay in wait for someone to die so they can con their money from them. How convenient? Is that love? Is that family? I think the answer is obvious. I refer to it as “narcissistic sodomization.”
Self-care and self-compassion are needed for healing because they “neutralize” the toxic emotions and empower ourselves to learn how to regulate our emotions again. These are good “habits” that relieve the pain and help us assimilate and reconnect with ourselves again. So, in effect self-care and self-compassion allow us an opportunity to witness our healing. They allow us to actively participate in our own healing and regain trust in ourselves and feel safe and secure in our own bodies. Self-care and self-compassion allow us to nourish our souls and are also critical to building self-worth, self-assurance and self-reliance and feel like “ourselves” again, not the pain addicted wounded versions who rely on abusers and manipulators who do not have our best interests at heart to alleviate our discomfort.
As you were growing up you may not have learned how to take good care of yourself. In fact, much of your attention may have been on taking care of others, on just getting by, or on “behaving well.” Perhaps you were even punished for thinking about and caring for yourself.
Part of healing for those who were victims and continue to be susceptible to their attacks, then, is learning to maintain and protect your personal boundaries so you are not vulnerable to emotional predators.
I write frequently about the differences between aggression and power. I’d like to expand on this topic as it relates to harm, fear and danger a bit more because understanding this is critical to your healing
So that big bad wolf narcissist, that vampire whom you think will suck your life’s blood dry is in actually just a weak manipulative annoyance, an aggressive mosquito that has learned to push the right buttons just like the weak coward behind the curtain pretending to be the all powerful Oz by creating an illusion of smoke and mirrors. Aggression, abusing authority, and exploiting vulnerabilities are not synonymous with power, strength, love, or danger, folks! The result?
It is this irrational thinking that allows us unknowingly to let abusers who cannot generate their own energy target and exploit us and is the origin of 
Remember that the ex-girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, father, mother, co-worker are nothing more than weak bullies, nothing but simple predictable energy vampires. Without you and your attention and energy, they shrivel up and die like the Wicked Witch of the West on the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of water destroyed her. The “Great and Powerful Oz” was a weak coward presenting an illusion of greatness and power. Dorothy and her entourage had the brains, heart, courage, and answers all the time. And so do you!
They are just blocked and we need to unblock them.
Are you compassionate? Empathetic?
and insightful and belong to the 40% of human beings who sense when something’s not right, who respond to their gut instinct, and who take action and speak up. They frequently like the child in the The Emperor’s New Clothes, will tell the truth and expose lies and wrong doing and are targets of scapegoaters, bullies, narcissists, and sociopaths who are driven by exaggerated envy and fear of shame, lack of compassion, and the inability to self sooth.
This inability to see the “bad” in others also significantly enhances their vulnerability to attacks from emotional vampires throughout their lives. As a result, empaths can be targeted easily by energy vampires such as scapegoaters, bullies, narcissists, and sociopaths who enlist other uncompassionate and apathetic people in their wrong-doing. So in actuality, abused children and adults in the world are some of the “nicest” people in the world. This is crazy making, folks, and is the heart of scapegoating and abuse in families and in my opinion, one of the main causes of evil in society today. The number one reason people seek counseling is because they were scapegoated as a child and suffer post traumatic distress. This is psychological trauma! Read on.
Problems escalate for empaths, however, when apaths are in the vicinity. Empaths can be brought down, distressed and forced into the position of the lone fighter by the inaction of more apathetic types round them. This is also how school and work group bullying and scapegoating works. The bullies enlist the apathetic, fearful, and defenseless ones who are the ones most likely to go with the flow, to agree that the emperor/empress is wearing new clothes. Apaths behave defenselessly because they want to avoid unpleasant or harmful circumstances [including the bully turning on them]. Apathy is an avoidance strategy that contributes to abuse…by proxy!
Kim Saeed, a narcissistic abuse recovery expert, says that narcissists prey on empaths and highly sensitive people. Empaths operate predominately from love, humility, and giving. They have a natural capacity for healing and teaching others. However, until they learn how to responsibly use those gifts, they are often taken advantage of…not only by romantic partners, but people in general. Further, empaths have a track record of developing codependent behaviors in childhood to deal with the overwhelming unfairness in the world and to please others, which they usually carry into their adult relationships. It is easy to see, then, how empaths who were abused as children can develop exaggerated codependency issues and dependence on others to define their worth.
Yourlifelifter 